


Technically

by orphan_account



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/F, First Person, POV Outsider, Second Person, but not really, can be read as johnlock if you want, not in detail, slightly angst?, talking about war
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-01
Updated: 2015-03-01
Packaged: 2018-03-15 17:54:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3456416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just something quick I wrote, with John and another discharged soldier talking about the war. Fairly ambiguous, and kind of a character study? Make of it what you will.</p><p>BTW the switch between first person and second person is completely intentional.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Technically

"Technically," he starts, and then his blue eyes drift away from mine, over to the window on the wall, with the red curtains tied back and mid-morning sun shining through.  
You see war in his eyes, the same war that once occupied you, and although you both faced the same enemy you get the feeling he took something from it that you could never find. You left, and so did he, different ways, but the result was the same. Now he faces a new enemy, enemies that stalk the streets of night and kill with a frightful devotion to the art of killing that still startles you, and maybe him, even though you've both encountered it before. And it lights up his eyes, this new fight. (I know, because I've seen it before.)  
I don't push him to speak. Perhaps it's because my lips have been sealed shut for a long while, and I know how hard it is to speak after having been silent for so long. A pause in conversation doesn't always mean distraction, or ignorance.  
His fingers grip the edge of the red arm on the red armchair, he shifts, rolling his shoulder back. I remember he was injured there-shot, to be exact.  
"Technically," he begins again, and this time he continues. You lean forward, listening for the war you remember to fall from his lips. "Medical personnel aren't supposed to be out in the thick of it."  
And that is the beginning, and the only tale he tells is one of his normal days, out in the sand and then back to the tents, where no friends die, no lives are miraculously saved, where a few jokes are shared and sighs of wistfulness are passed back and forth. But you can read what else he did, what else he saw, what else he feels, from the pauses, hesitations, stops, stutters, and oh too careful omissions. You can tell he was a much braver man than he lets on, a much braver and stronger and darker man (if dark is the right word for it, because all you can do, as a soldier, is put him on a golden pedestal) than his jumpers and gentle smile may lead me to believe.  
He was a doctor who went to the war to mend and ended up as Captain, as saviour, healing some and killing others. You went to the war to kill, and you did kill, and you only healed when the other option was much too horrible to contemplate. You both were discharged, you both miss it, and as long as no one sane knows how crazy you are, who does the secret want to return to battle hurt?  
And it's darker now, as his story finishes, light in words yet heavy with meaning spoken and silent. He looks to the window, and I follow his gaze. I wonder what he sees there, out across the buildings and to the horizon. You know all too well.  
The war, the war, the war floats around the room. A door flies open and his lover swoops over, all lanky limbs and dark curls. He leans on the red chair, head hovering over golden hair, and raises an eyebrow at me, as if to ask what I was still doing there. The soldier's blue eyes have lit up, not in the same way they do when I saw him in the hallway, panting for breath and laughing after chasing a criminal through alleyway after alleyway, but fonder. Happier. He fought his war, and now he fights a different one, one that perhaps he loves even more. One that has saved him, while he has stayed a saviour.  
But what do you know.


End file.
